


concerning callyx giles

by iimpavid



Series: unfinished duet [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Carnivorous Plants, Gen, Organized Crime, Other, Peter Nureyev's Alias Catalog, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22102177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: Contrary to what he likes to let people assume, Peter Nureyev is not completely bereft of interpersonal connections across the galaxy.
Series: unfinished duet [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564903
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	concerning callyx giles

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [gin and chthonic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21710116) by [iimpavid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid), [voidteatime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/pseuds/voidteatime). 



> Just a little bit more on Peter's connections to the Melva crime family. There should be more to come but we'll see if I manage to write it. This first "chapter" follows Gin & Cthonic directly.

The lomatia is a plant that relishes cultivation and resists containment.

Peter sits on his pallet atop a cargo trunk watching the tenacious shrub grow while he changes the bandages on his feet. The seed had come cheaply in comparison to its real value. If Mariya Turgenev hadn’t been Brahmese, he would have assumed she didn’t know the value or danger of the infinitesimal seed she kept in the hermetically sealed locket at her throat. But she was and she had and, having danced with her daily for months in rehearsals for _Étoile Miséricordieuse_ , he could only conclude that she was insane.

The lomatia had, while he watched, spread its roots several millimeters up its shatterproof, air-tight, vacuum-generating terrarium. There are only a few hours before it completely enshrouded itself in its own roots. Then, it would shatter the terrarium. Then it would flower. The barely-visible speck of a seed had responded so well to the drop of water and the low light he’d given it. To the lomatia, that drop of water was as nutrient-rich as a fresh corpse. After it went to seed he would have a few short days to persuade someone to take the entire skip off his hands or else abandon it entirely.

Wincing and trying to distribute his weight evenly across his aching feet, he stands so he can rummage in the trunk beneath his pallet for the sleek atmosuit he’d sold the last of his Plutonian pickings to buy. It wouldn’t keep the lomatia from growing over him in his sleep, if it came to that, but it would keep it from putting down roots in his airways.

Dressed and comparatively safe he sits at the skip’s console and makes a call.

It’s tricky, getting a hold of the Melva heir who is for the first time in her life aligned with her father’s goals in one single facet: using Callyx Giles’ head as a hood ornament. So instead he calls the last number he has for Irina Morten; the love of Dora’s life had, last he checked, escaped with her life and worked nights. There was no reason for her now to answer. 

“Irina,” Ysadora Melva whispers down the line, “ _what_ are you doing calling? This isn’t the right time.”

“If I ask you not to hang up, will it make you hang up faster?”

Her sudden silence is heavy with the weight of a grudge. “Callyx.”

“I’m surprised you answered these coords, Miss Melva, but this is remarkably convenient. Let me cut to the chase: I want to make amends.”

“You couldn’t _pay_ me to.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You call that begging?”

“I have a live lomatia specimen about to bloom in my possession.”

“Impossible. For ten years now no merchant vessels have made it to —”

“I didn’t have to go that far,” he interrupts, cool and confident. “Let me be frank. If this plant goes to seed outside suitable containment I’m going to die. That’s not a problem, really, until you consider the scavengers who’ll eventually find my ship and bring active lomatia spores… anywhere in the system. You have the facilities necessary to mitigate the problem it presents. You also have a use for at least one of its flowers.”

“A fancy cocktail decoration will not secure my inheritance,” she said and it was clear he had her attention.

“A suitor of adequate means will.”

She laughed, bright cackle. “You have no means!”

“I think you’ll find that Alfred Ivan has recently acquired quite a few assets in promethium mining ventures on the Outer Rim.”

She snorted. “Promethium? You’re supposed to keep lies small, make sure they’re _believable_.”

He hummed, “Only small shares. To the tune of a few billion. I’ll send you his portfolio.”

There was a brief quiet while Ysadora opened the communication and read it over. Twice. 

“I have a clean hangar you can use. If you’re lying to me, Cal, I’ll let my father deal with you.”

Peter cast a glance to the lomatia in its terrarium. Watching it's crawling growth made him nauseous. “I wouldn’t lie about this. I mean it: I want to make amends.”

“We’ll see, won’t we? I’ll send you the coordinates you’ll need.”

“Make sure you staff it with personnel you can stand to lose.”

* * *

The skip he’d stolen on Pluto sat not ten yards away, in special containment all its own, metal innards groaning softly. Uniformed Invictus employees in hazard gear combed through the skip. Everything that had arrived on it was deemed unsalvageable except for the unremarkable contents of a single black duffle bag. The warmth of being under a dome had spurred the lomatia’s lightning-fast growth to new heights. 

The remains of a technician who’d cut himself shaving that morning had also helped.

Sitting naked, scrubbed, and shivering in a clean room built by Invictus Innovations is a small price to pay in exchange for not being met by a Melva hitman upon landing. In fact, Peter welcomes the opportunity to have confirmation that the lomatia has not, by some miracle of evolution, managed to root spores into his bloodstream without being in bloom. Of course, stealing back his blood samples and destroying the results of the battery of tests Ysadora so kindly requires him to endure will be a challenge… but he’s always enjoyed pushing himself.

Dora let herself into Peter’s clean room and it was confirmation enough: he wasn’t going to go the way of the poor bastard with the shaving cut. The knots in his stomach were nerves, not roots.

She seems impressed when she says, “You weren’t lying.” 

“Sometimes I do that.” 

“Where did you get the specimen?”

“Have you ever heard of Mariya Turgenev?” 

“The Brahmese ballerina? What about her?” 

“She gets homesick; keeps mementos in her dressing room… and a piece of her homeworld in a locket around her neck.” 

“Yes, the one she apparently never takes off.”

Guileless and unabashed, Peter delicately lifted one foot to show her the state of it: blistered and raw, some of his toes are black with bruising or stress fractures. “I learned to dance. I stole it on the opening night of _Étoile Miséricordieuse_.”

“You learned to dance well enough to get that close to the prima ballerina of the Terrondan Imperium _in a year_?” 

“Nine months, actually. I had some business to take care of on Pluto before and after. Putting together your husband,” he explained, like he planned it all. Like he hadn’t spent the last week in watchful apprehension of the plant growing in the back of his stolen skip’s cargo area.

Dora’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe him but her belief wasn’t required to acknowledge the reality before her. “How did a man like you,” the subtext: _a dangerous man, a man who doesn’t exist, a man with hidden teeth_ , “come to work for the likes of my father?” 

The weight of that subtext makes him smile. He tells her the truth, “Dumb luck, mostly.” 


End file.
